


Tea

by IamShadow21, kath_ballantyne



Series: Teapot 'verse [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Domestic, Established Relationship, Fanart, Future Fic, Gift Fic, Kissing, Living Together, M/M, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post - Deathly Hallows, Romance, Tea, Teapot 'verse, Teapot 'verse Future Fic, Tribute Fic, Winner: bestmatesawards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-15
Updated: 2007-10-15
Packaged: 2018-01-07 00:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IamShadow21/pseuds/IamShadow21, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kath_ballantyne/pseuds/kath_ballantyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry doesn't think he's a morning person, but he can't help but be one.<br/><i>Set Three years after The Battle of Hogwarts.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Tea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mad_martha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/gifts).



> This is my first posted fanfic of ANY DESCRIPTION in seven years. Concrit is highly encouraged (especially with regards spelling errors, etc.) but please, be gentle.  
> Dedication: This fic is dedicated to the incomparable [Mad Martha](http://marthas-library.livejournal.com/). Her Circles of Power and Two Households inspired me to write again. If you haven't read her fic, go and do it now. You won't be disappointed.
> 
> This story placed at bestmatesawards 2007!  
> [](http://shadowfiction.livejournal.com/763.html)

It’s not long after dawn.

I’ve often felt that I’m a morning person not by birth, but by habit. Every day of my childhood, at six thirty AM precisely, the sharp report of rapping knuckles on my cupboard door and the piercing voice would wake me with a jolt. There was no lazy, in-between time to lie, half-awake, half-asleep, still muddled in my dreams and cosy. I had to be instantly alert and ready, from the age of five or six, to juggle hot pans and steaming coffee without spills or slops. A groggy mind equalled burns, scolding, hunger and imprisonment. Perhaps that was why my perverse brain insisted on waking me early every morning, when really all I wanted was to doze for another few hours.

It’s beautiful outside in an ethereal way. Tendrils of mist hang over the pond, trailing upwards to wind themselves around the limbs of the fruit trees like insubstantial ribbons. Foliage seems dipped in silver and a large spider’s web slung between two branches glitters with jewels of dewdrops.

This is a calming, peaceful time of the day, even if I do feel like an interloper on its serenity. Despite this, there is a comfort to be found in the ritual of the morning, a rightness in the simple tasks. I settle the kettle on the hob and light the burner.

I’ve never gotten the hang of doing cooking by magic the way Mrs Weasley does. She can cook up a three course meal while haranguing her family and everything turns out superbly. I’d made a few half-hearted attempts, which had been monumental disasters, and gone back to what I was familiar with; manual labour. 

Mrs Weasley had watched me prepare a meal from scratch with an intensity her husband usually reserved for talk of electrical objects and aeroplanes. 

“It just seems so much _work_ ,” she observed, as I mashed the potatoes. 

The teapot is a squat, stoneware creation in robin’s egg blue. I love it. It’s hand-thrown, and has all those little imperfections in the glaze and the clay that make handmade things so incredibly wonderful and completely unique. The colour is lighter in some places and darker in others, and under the handle there is a thumbprint where the maker pressed the clay together to join it. It reminds me of things that are dug up hundreds, even thousands of years later from places like Egypt and Pompeii. The craftsmen who made them are dust, but the marks they made are captured in the objects, like an insect in amber. Something of them remains.

I measure the dried leaves precisely with a spoon especially for the purpose. I know it’s ridiculously finicky but I do it anyway, even though it often provokes good-natured ribbing from others.

“How did you manage to _fail_ Potions for so many years when you’re that obsessive about _tea_?” George asked on one occasion.

“We didn’t make tea in Potions,” I said, as if that explained everything.

“Let me guess,” he continued, “you took so long measuring _every bloody thing_ you ran out of time.”

I couldn’t think of a decent retort to this, so I slipped salt into his mug instead of sugar.

After he’d stopped coughing and spluttering over the biscuits, George chortled and clapped me on the back. I think he was proud of me. It wasn’t an inventive prank, but I’d caught him out. I could never have done that, years ago. Maybe I’d become more devious, and since Fred’s death George hadn’t had much chance to exercise his mischief instincts. They must have atrophied a little, like muscles. Wasted away from lack of regular use.

I set the mugs on the countertop just as the kettle begins to whistle. These mugs are plain, serviceable, unremarkable. The teapot was a one-off find. If there had been matching mugs I’d have bought a dozen. Merlin knows, I have enough money for the odd impulse buy of ceramics. And with all the Weasleys and ex-school mates that pop in for a cuppa on a moment’s notice (or no notice at all) there is always a need for them. 

I love that waft of fragrant steam that drifts up the second after the just boiled water hits the dried leaves in the pot. I lean over to breathe in deeply, and my glasses turn opaque for a few moments, blinding me. There is nothing quite like that first, rich gasp of scent. It’s like unwrapping a big block of Honeydukes and being able to taste the chocolate on your tongue as well as smelling it, before you even break off the first piece. The vapour from the teapot was something you could taste, like a tantalising ghost of the tea itself to come.

I fetch the little mesh strainer and teaspoons, the sugar bowl and the milk while it steeps. The tea strainer was another of my little items the Wizard-borns I knew found odd.

“Why don’t you just Banish them instead?” Ginny asked me, quite confused. 

I shrugged. “I like doing it this way.”

“But it doesn’t even get all the leaves out.”

I tried to explain that that wasn’t the point – well, it _was_ the point, but it wasn’t _the point_ …and gave up weakly after a few sentences.

"Dawn" by 

When I begin to pour, weak sunlight from the kitchen window catches the stream and turns the brown liquid to fiery, molten amber. Exactly the colour of the hair of the not-a-morning-person still fast asleep upstairs. One cup has almost as much milk as tea, the other has nothing more than two spoonfuls of raw sugar. 

Hermione often nags me about the sugar in my tea.

“It rots your teeth,” she lectured primly, her dentistry genes coming out full force in response to my apparent recklessness. “If you must have your tea that way, you really should use a sweetener or something.”

When she visited next, she brought a jarful of an odd, fine-grade white powder with her which she put into my mug instead. “There,” she said triumphantly. “Try that.”

One mouthful was all I managed. Under Hermione’s reproachful gaze, I tipped the offensive liquid down the sink, rinsed the mug thoroughly, and prepared myself an unadulterated brew.

“That,” I said firmly, “was truly vile. I’d rather have dentures by thirty than drink anything polluted with…whatever that was.”

Hermione huffed indignantly. “Honestly! You’re so melodramatic.”

I raise the mug to my lips, inhale deeply, and then take the first, scalding sip. Sweet and bitter all at once, it rolls across my palate. I swallow and exhale a satisfied sigh.

I gave up tea for a while. In my Third Year at Hogwarts, when Professor Trelawney predicted my death in every cup, I made a point of taking coffee every morning at breakfast. I even quite enjoyed it. But something drew me back to tea. When the joking from my classmates died down, I again began pouring for myself that morning cup. It felt right to start the first lesson of the day with the lingering flavour still on my tongue.

I hear a shuffle on the bare boards of the kitchen floor, but I don’t turn, and a pair of long, strong arms dusted with freckles wind around me from behind. A gentle kiss lands on the nape of my neck, then another just behind my ear. 

“Morning, gorgeous,” he whispers, his breath tickling me. 

I set my mug down carefully and lean back into his arms, shutting my eyes and absorbing the presence that is Ron. He’s warm, giving off his own little furnace of heat. The skin of his neck smells slightly salty and I plant a kiss of my own there. “Morning. You’re up early.”

I feel him shrug a little. “I heard the kettle. The bed was lonely.”

“I didn’t hear you come down,” I say, turning and facing him properly. His copper hair brushes his shoulders. Mrs Weasley is always dropping very unsubtle hints that he should cut it. I like it like this, especially as it is now, rumpled and tangled. I card it gently with my fingertips, stroking it back to tuck behind his ear.

A little grin tickles his lips. “You seemed busy. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

I blink. “How long were you watching me?”

The smile blossoms full force, radiant and incandescent. It makes me melt so easily, that smile. “A while.”

Ron leans forward and his mouth meets mine. The kiss is sleepy and tender, like Ron himself. Soft, but still passionate. After we break apart, the tip of his pink tongue darts across his lips, tasting them. “Tea,” he murmurs. 

“Yes.”

I hand him his; half tea, half milk, and he takes a large mouthful. Ron’s eyes close, and his long, almost transparent lashes brush his cheeks. He swallows, and smacks his lips appreciatively. “Perfect.”

Perfect? Yes, it is.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Apples](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113367) by [IamShadow21](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IamShadow21/pseuds/IamShadow21), [kath_ballantyne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kath_ballantyne/pseuds/kath_ballantyne)




End file.
